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You’re finally learning as a manager to resist the urge of the technical expert to jump in and solve things for your team. You’re learning to resist the, “Oh, here. Just let me do it.” That’s wonderful! And … it’s possible to take the “hands off” approach too far. Most of the time, yes, it’s…
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The request to “demonstrate strategic thinking” often feels like a very tall order for first-line managers of engineering teams. After all, you’re not out there casting the corporate vision or setting the company’s direction. You have projects, releases, and deliverables and people to organize. Your work and your job feel extremely tactical. But with every…
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If you’ve been keeping up with me, you’ve probably heard me highlight the importance of pointing out observable behavior when you give feedback to your team members. This emphasis reflects guidance in the Manager Tools feedback model as well as the Situation-Behavior-Impact model commonly known as SBI. But when you’re giving positive feedback, the way…
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When you lead through a layoff, the hard work isn’t over when the last severance conversation is complete. For days, weeks, or even months afterwards, you and your team may feel ongoing discomfort. If you participated in the cuts as a member of management, the sense of guilt can feel terrible. But your surviving team…
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“I already told you this … twice.” I know how frustrating it can be to share something important with your team, only to find out they don’t remember ever hearing it. It’s been said that if you say something seven times, half of your team will tell you they heard it only once. Here are…
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“I’m sorry; I can’t share that.” That’s a really uncomfortable thing for many managers to say – especially shortly after being tapped to lead the team they were once a member of. “Ohhhh… You think you’re better than us now?” is a feared reaction, and one that managers often want to avoid. Combine that with…
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Managers with a technical background can be very analytical when it comes to making decisions. But when you don’t feel like you have enough data to make an analytical decision and the pressure starts to rise, you can often experience what Dan Harrison calls “flip behavior.” Abandoning your analytical strength, you can flip under pressure…
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I saw a social media post recently from a job seeker who shared that the hiring company had asked him to take a personality assessment – after sharing with him the specific personality profile from that assessment that they were looking for in their leaders. Several things about that story made me go, “Hmmm??” For…
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Today I’d like to share a specific example of a time I had to embrace the kind of portfolio-level thinking I referenced in my video a couple of days ago. This was the scenario… My team was responsible for a … we’ll call it “mature” product line. It wasn’t built on the latest flashy technology…
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I’m sure you’ve thought a lot about how to scale the systems that you and your team of engineers are designing. But have you thought about how you personally scale in your engineering management career? Scaling yourself doesn’t just mean managing more engineers. It’s about having a greater impact, handling higher levels of complexity, and…
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Delegating is not abdicating. A couple of days ago, I talked about the importance of granting autonomy to your team members to make decisions. And part of delegating without fear is developing the skill of coaching your team members and having regular and meaningful conversations about their performance. You’ll delegate decisions to them, and they’ll…
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The autonomy that you craved as an individual contributor can become the very thing you deprive from your team members when you become their manager. You wanted autonomy because you believed you were skilled enough to make good choices. And now you have the authority to impose those choices on others. But the desire to…
Musings
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